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Besides over two weeks of scientific operations, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has conducted its longest drive since experiencing a memory anomaly two months ago, pushing its total odometry to over 20 kilometers.

The rover is now located at the Red Planet's Lake Orcadie, a site where NASA previously attempted to drill into the grey rock.

NASA had previously attempted to get rock samples using Curiosity's drill at these sites. However, the rover's instrument did not penetrate far enough into the bedrock to generate sufficient samples.

The switch will enable engineers conduct a detailed diagnosis of a technical issue that has prevented the rover's active computer (Side B) from storing scienctific and some key engineering data since September 15, NASA said.

"We are operating on Side A starting today, but it could take us time to fully understand the root cause of the issue and devise workarounds for the memory on Side B.

The computer swap will allow data and event records to be stored on the Side-A computer.

"We spent the last week checking out Side A and preparing it for the swap," Lee said.

"It's certainly possible to run the mission on the Side-A computer if we really need to. But our plan is to switch back to Side B as soon as we can fix the problem to utilise its larger memory size."

--IANS

rt/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)